May. 26, 2025
BWT Pharma & Biotech supplies systems to provide quality-critical clean utilities for drug production around the world. We also offer all related services, including maintenance and training, which are necessary to ensure high quality levels on the long run. We are therefore a mission-critical partner for all drug manufacturers who rely on our expertise to ensure patient safety in the manufacturing of their products.
If you want to learn more, please visit our website.
Could you explain the difference between normal drinking water, purified water, and water for injections (WFI) to be used for medical purposes? How does this reflect the German quality promise?
Relevant water qualities for pharmaceutical applications are Purified Water (PW) and Water For Injection (WFI). These have been formalized in the Pharmacopoeia, which is the rulebook for pharmacists, and these water qualities are used for all critical manufacturing processes, including cleaning processes.
Pure Steam (or Clean Steam) is also a critical clean utility in Pharma. It matches WFI quality and is used to sterilize equipment, instruments, and other production-related materials. Microbiological contamination can pose a serious risk to patients, hence this Pure Steam is of particular importance.
In contrast to normal drinking water, which is already of a pleasantly good quality in Germany, these pharmaceutical grades of water contain barely any dissolved salts and microorganisms. This is what makes the water suitable for medicine production.
PW is of slightly lower pharmaceutical quality compared to WFI. This water is used for less critical applications (e.g., oral dosage forms such as tablets) or for cleaning processes.
WFI is the higher quality with even stricter microbial safety requirements. This quality is used for parenteral medication, such as vaccines or eye drops, and for the final rinsing during critical cleaning processes.
Where do we in Germany encounter these different types of water in our daily lives? How does water affect our health or the effectiveness of medicines?
Pharmaceutical water is used to produce every type of dosage form. From ointments, drops, and tablets to injections into muscles, veins, or under the skin: The correct water quality is vital to ensure patient safety. This applies not only to the actual production of the medication, but also to the cleaning and sterilization of the used apparatus, equipment, or instruments.
Safe medication supply to patients is only possible with these water qualities, and we therefore encounter them indirectly in every available quality medicine.
Why is exceptionally pure water required to produce medicine? How does the German pharma industry guarantee the highest-possible quality?
Water is an essential component of every drug production process, whether it is used for cleaning processes or as part of the drug itself. Depending on the dosage form, active ingredients enter the body in different ways. Less risky dosage forms are tablets, syrup, capsules, or drops. These are ingested and enter the body through the digestive tract. The digestive tract forms a natural barrier that protects the body from microbial contamination. Aqua Purificata is therefore sufficient for the production of such medicines.
Other drugs enter the body directly, e.g., through injections into the blood or tissue. They bypass the digestive tract, hence the name parenteral drugs. Obviously, patient safety is critical here, as the drug bypasses the safety barrier of the digestive tract and enters the body directly, where only the immune system remains as the last line of defense. WFI, the highest pharmaceutical water quality, is intended for such applications.
In addition to using the correct water quality, numerous other quality assurance measures – set out in pharmaceutical regulations – and the considerable technical efforts made by pharmaceutical manufacturers all aim to ensure that medications are safe and well tolerated for patients. We at BWT P&B make a small but essential contribution to this effort.
The pharmaceutical industry requires large amounts of ultrapure water, but long-haul transportation can endanger the quality of this special water. This is often neither economically nor ecologically sensible. Can you explain how BWT’s proprietary technologies ensure that local water – be it from the tap, a spring, a well, or a body of water – can be converted into ultrapure water or water for injection (WFI) on-site? And how does German water compare internationally to French, American, or Canadian water, particularly in its quality and treatment options?
The water qualities PW and WFI used in the pharma industry do not differ internationally. The respective national regulations (Pharmacopoeias) are harmonized in this respect.
Pure Water can be stored and transported to a rather limited extent. Only small quantities are bottled in a sterile facility and then sent to customers for laboratory or low-volume applications.
Pharmaceutical production requires large quantities, which have to be produced from local drinking water using our water treatment systems then stored with appropriate measures to maintain the quality and then distributed to the points of use within the facility.
A variety of specialized process steps are available for this purpose, which progressively desalinate, degas, and render the water virtually free of germs. Starting with drinking water, these processes usually consist of softening, followed by reverse osmosis and electrodeionization to produce PW. The PW is then further refined to WFI by ultrafiltration or distillation. The storage of this water is of particular importance. In storage tanks and piping systems, the water quality produced is consistently safeguarded by sanitary design plant engineering solutions and the use of several sanitization methods to be able to bring the high quality to the point of use.
This also highlights another advantage of our very good drinking water quality in Germany. Drinking water can usually be fed into our treatment systems without any further pre-treatment. This reduces water consumption and the need for chemicals. I cannot emphasize enough what a precious and important resource our drinking water is and that we must actively protect it.
Any clean utility system has to be tailored to the local feed water quality to ensure efficient, safe, and reliable production. If, for example, only water from rivers, lakes, or poor-quality tap water is available as feedwater, additional pre-treatment steps, such as filtration, chlorination, activated carbon filtration, and others are necessary. In addition to the system costs, these also increase the operating costs as well as the water consumption. It can therefore be said that water treatment systems in Germany can have a very high level of efficiency due to the good quality of drinking water.
Would you mind giving us an example of how and why water for injections (WFI) is used in medicine production? How does “quality made in Germany” contribute to patient safety here?
As already mentioned, patient safety is at the core of what we do, which in turn requires us to focus on microbial safety when producing water.
As a natural habitat, water is always affected by bacterial growth, and accordingly all our efforts, technical facilities, and procedures must be aimed at preventing this bacterial growth or keeping it within narrow limits. Consequently, the monitoring and testing of water quality using suitable measuring methods is of particular importance.
To this end, BWT P&B has developed a measuring technology that can identify and quantify living germs in the water directly in the system and in real time. This is a further contribution to ensuring the safety of the product and operating the systems efficiently and without interruption.
What are the German regulations for the quality of water used in pharmaceuticals? Who ensures compliance?
Pharma manufacturing is subject to a large number of legal regulations. In addition to the aforementioned Pharmacopoeias, the German Medicines Act, GMP regulations, and many other regulations govern how medicines must be manufactured and how their quality must be ensured.
For the pharma water sector, it all starts with the Drinking Water Ordinance.
The pharmaceutical manufacturer is also supervised by the local regulatory authority. If the manufacturer exports abroad, the supervisory authorities and regulations of the importing country also apply additionally.
A comprehensive regulation and control regiment has therefore been established. The export success of German pharmaceutical manufacturers shows their ability to produce innovative, effective and, above all, top-quality products. This is furthermore supported by the highly efficient and quality-conscious suppliers for essential production facilities and machinery.
How much water does a factory need to produce a batch of tablets? How does the German pharma industry ensure an efficient use of resources?
This question is difficult to answer in a general way, as batch sizes and production processes differ significantly.
Simple medicines such as headache pills are produced in huge quantities; the relative water consumption is proportionally low. Other, highly specialized medication is produced in smaller quantities while maintaining the same quality requirements, which means the specific water consumption, and therefore the price of the medicine, will inevitably be higher.
But you might get a feel for industry water requirements if you look at the average German medium-sized company that produces medicine in tablet form. These businesses make up the majority of our customer base as well as the domestic industrial landscape. In these companies, we typically see systems with a production capacity of 2 to 5 cubic meters per hour, that’s 2,000 to 5,000 liters per hour. For comparison, a domestic tap supplies around 300 liters per hour. Nobody is going to leave a tap running all day at home, I hope, but pharmaceutical production sometimes runs in 3 shifts for 24 hours a day. So you can see quite quickly that the demand for water is high, as in any other industry. Here, efficiency gains through technology can make a big difference. This is why 50% of the production costs for pure water come from the feedwater (i.e., drinking water) and the water efficiency of such systems is a core element of all our development work.
Water efficiency is increased through a variety of technical measures. It should always be noted that this cannot be done at the expense of microbial safety or water quality, as these are non-negotiable in pharmaceutical production. The successful implementation of these requirements and the combination of these opposites in a technically reliable solution is the key success factor for us as a plant manufacturer and a manifestation of our market leadership.
How is employee training structured to ensure proper handling of different types of water in the pharmaceutical industry?
Water quality is produced in a technical facility in which decades of expertise and the highest engineering skills must work in harmony. However, this only works reliably in the long term if it is built, programmed, operated, and maintained by quality-conscious and qualified personnel.
At this point, the manufacturing location in Germany also can differ significantly from other locations, as the high level of professionalism of our workforce is a factor that, despite all the need to improve our education systems, we often do not adequately recognize and appreciate. As a result, we as a society, unfortunately, do not invest enough in this aspect.
At BWT P&B, however, we are very outspoken about the fact that the consistent quality standards that arise from our work in the pharmaceutical industry only allows one conclusion to be drawn:
The training and continuing professional education of our employees is a central component of our business. This is the only way we can efficiently transform complex processes into plant technology and operate them efficiently, safely and reliably for our customers over decades.
That’s why we founded the BWT P&B Academy several years ago. Here, we offer all training and constant professional education in one place, not just for our employees but also for our customers and industry partners.
What challenges related to water are you facing on a daily basis?
We align the demands of our customers with economic considerations, technical challenges, and resource-saving measures on a daily basis. This gives rise to a multitude of challenges that we successfully overcome every day.
What trends do you see emerging in the use and treatment of water in the German pharma industry, particularly regarding sustainability and quality?
Efficiency in terms of water and energy consumption will be a key driver of future developments. The expected shortage and associated deterioration in the quality of drinking water will be a driver for increased treatment efforts and costs. This will be a much greater challenge in other regions of the world.
For our market, technologies to increase efficiency such as sophisticated reverse osmosis systems and ozone technology for sanitization as well as the aforementioned online microbiology measurement will thus help create and operate resource-saving production facilities. Sustainability itself will therefore be the defining trend of the coming years.
What should patients understand about how “quality made in Germany” impacts the role and use of water in pharmaceutical production?
[…]
Ultimately, patients in Germany can trust that local manufacturers and plant constructors, like us, work to the highest quality standards, because this is the only way to permanently justify our existence as an organization in the face of international competition.
And at the end of the day, medication is somewhat like insurance. You can be quite happy if you have a good one, and even happier if you don’t need it.
With this in mind, stay healthy.
• Water Science School HOME • Water Quality topics •
Source of pharmaceuticals in streams
In a to U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) study, scientists found that pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities can be a significant source of pharmaceuticals to the environment. Effluents from two wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) that receive discharge from pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities (PMFs) had 10 to 1,000 times higher concentrations of pharmaceuticals than effluents from 24 WWTPs across the nation that do not receive PMF discharge. The release waters from these two WWTPs were discharged to streams where the measured pharmaceuticals were traced downstream, and as far as 30 kilometers from one plant's outfall.
The source of pharmaceuticals in water is not just from manufacturing plants. You probably know that antibiotics and drugs are used in the livestock industry, and for streams receiving runoff from animal-feeding operations, pharmaceuticals such as acetaminophen, caffeine, cotinine, diphenhydramine, and carbamazepine, have been found in USGS studies. Another source of pharmaceuticals in stream water is you and me. Essentially, drugs that people take internally are not all metabolized in the body, and the excess ends up in our wastewater leaving homes and entering the sewage-treatment plants. It might sound surprising that these drugs could be detected in streams miles downstream from wastewater-treatment plants, but many plants do not routinely remove pharmaceuticals from water.
Listen up!
The USGS has a couple of podcasts about pharmaceuticals and the aquatic environment to help you learn about this problem:
Here is a transcript of one of them:
The USGS South Atlantic Water Science Center has released a podcast titled "Emerging Contaminants, Pharmaceuticals in South Carolina Rivers and Streams". USGS Research Ecologist Dr. Paul Bradley discussed with Ray Douglas the USGS Toxic Substances Research on emerging contaminants in rivers and streams; the information is pertinent to all of the United States, not just South Carolina. Below is a transcript of the podcast.
Dr. Paul Bradley: "There is little doubt that these compounds have been present in the environment for decades and perhaps even more. It's possible that there have been long term ecological consequences that are reaching a critical stage. So while these releases are sometimes alarming. You know, having the information is better than not having the information."
Featured content:With competitive price and timely delivery, ShekeSaisi sincerely hope to be your supplier and partner.
Today on our program, Emerging Contaminants, Pharmaceuticals in South Carolina's Rivers and Streams. I am Ray Douglas and this is Water Science for a changing world.
Bradley: "And so we need to begin to correct this problem, we certainly need to understand it. So it is good that this information is coming out, and to do that we have to have release of new information."
Douglas: Joining us today is Dr. Paul Bradely. Dr. Bradley is a USGS Research Ecologist in the South Carolina Water Science Center. Paul, thanks for joining us today.
Bradley: Thank you.
Douglas: Paul, it seems seems that we're hearing more and more about emerging contaminants in our rivers and streams across the U.S.. Hopefully you can help us understand where these contaminants are originating, and how they are appearing in our drinking water. But before we get to that, can you tell us what exactly emerging contaminants are?
Bradley: Emerging contaminants is kind of this umbrella term that refers loosely to a wide variety of contaminants which presence in the environment has long been suspected, but which we have only recently verified due to improvements in analytical techniques. The emerging contaminants umbrella covers several broad classes of contaminant compounds that are loosely categorized according to their ecological impacts or their intended function, or their sources. These can include: pharmaceuticals and personal care products, organic wastewater compounds, antimicrobials, antibiotics, animal and human hormones, endocrine disrupting compounds, as well as a variety of domestic and industrial detergents. The critical thing to remember about all of these contaminants is, is that what's emerging about them is our awareness of their potential environmental impacts in the environment and our ability to actually detect the compounds. There is no doubt that many of these contaminants have been in the environment for a long time.
Douglas: Well can you give an idea of where they are, and how common they are in the environment?
Bradley: Well the USGS Toxic Substances Hydrology Program has been conducting a variety of national surveys over the past decade. And the results of these various studies indicates that, that emerging contaminants are actually widespread in the environment and they are found in rivers and streams across the nation. They are also found in groundwater systems. Not surprisingly you tend to have them in higher frequency near urban centers, but you also find them in rural areas where there is no readily obvious source for them.
Douglas: So, where are they coming from?
Bradley: Well ultimately, they are coming from us. Most of these compounds are produced either naturally or largely manufactured for use in and by people. For health applications like drugs, antibiotics synthetic hormones, you know for personal and domestic use like perfumes, antibacterial soaps and detergents. Everyday ingredients in products, domestic and industrial products. For farming applications, antibiotics and hormones are commonly used in cattle and in livestock operations. So given the wide range of emerging contaminants and the wide range of sources and uses, obviously there are a number of different ways that they can end up getting into the environment, and into the streams and rivers in particular. The obvious source, and the one most people pay attention too is via the human waste stream and municipal wastewater treatment facility outfalls directly into stream systems.
Certainly this is the one most people are aware of but there are a number of other sources out there, for example, industrial wastewater treatment plants also release emerging contaminants into rivers and streams. Septic systems, privately owned septic systems, for example are releasing emerging contaminants into the groundwater system and depending on how close the groundwater system and the release point is to a surface waster body, this groundwater contamination can make its way to rivers and streams. Animal operations, particularly so-called "concentrated animal feed operations," are another poorly recognized but certainly a major concern to the scientific community. Because in contrast to the human waste stream which is fairly closely monitored, animal waste stream is not monitored, and we expect that the contribution to the environment from this source is going to be major, perhaps even greater than the wastewater treatment plants.
Douglas: The wastewater treatment plants, aren't they supposed to be removing the compounds?
Bradley: Well in fact many emerging contaminant compounds, or compounds that we would consider emerging contaminants if we actually detected them in the environment, are actually removed completely in the wastewater treatment plant facilities, at least at the current detection levels, on the other hand many other emerging contaminant compounds that we can detect in the environment, their concentrations are greatly reduced in the wastewater treatment facility as they move along the wastewater stream to eventual release. And decreases in concentrations can be in excess or ninety to ninety-five percent. Unfortunately, many of them are still being released to the environment, at very low concentrations. And this is kind of the point, this is kind of an emerging environmental concern and these wastewater treatment plants were not originally intended to address this type of contamination and in fact are not actually intended to address contaminant concentrations at these part per trillion levels, these very very low concentrations. It turns out that there is evidence that even at these really low concentrations some of these emerging contaminants are actually harmful to the environment.
Douglas: Well based on your findings so far should the concern rest more for the fish, or for us, the general population?
Bradley: Well at this point the primary concern, has got to be for aquatic wildlife like fish. Because many of these compounds are obviously produced for function in human beings, the presence of these compounds in rivers, in streams or even worse in drinking water supplies is obviously a matter of deep concern for a lot of people. But it's important to remember people don't actually live in rivers or streams and the concentrations for example, of pharmaceuticals that are being observed in drinking water supplies, are in fact much, much, much lower than their therapeutic dose. That is, the concentration that they were intended to work in human beings. On the other hand, fish and other aquatic wildlife do live in rivers and they're much more vulnerable to certain types of emerging contaminants. For example, endocrine disrupting compounds, can alter the hormone system of fish, resulting in changes in secondary sexual characteristics and potentially resulting in reproductive failure. There has been a recent study reported done for example that is getting a lot of attention which reports that some popular sport fish like largemouth and smallmouth bass, are exhibiting female characteristics even in the male fish, and this phenomenon appears to be widespread in rivers and stream across the U.S.. and this study included two rivers in South Carolina, the Pee Dee River and the Savannah river and this kind of sexual alteration was observed in both of these rivers.
Douglas: Well as individuals what can we to help with this problem?
Bradley: Well we can change our behavior to be more environmentally friendly. Whether that means disposing of drugs properly, ie. don't throw them down the toilet or flush them down the drain. Buying products that are safer for the environment more biodegradable products. Or perhaps getting involved at the community level in order to improve environmental protection.
Douglas: Well I do believe that there are several states that have begun these drug take back events where you can drop off your unused or outdated pharmaceuticals for proper disposal. Is that really helpful or is there something more that we can be doing, or is the problem just going to get worse before it gets better?
Bradley: Well In a general sense, we need to start managing the release of emerging contaminates into the environment. It is kind of important to look at this problem in a historical perspective. And understand that controlling the release of human waste into rivers and streams is something that we have been doing for many years now. Actively managing waste releases to streams is something that we have been doing for more than a century. And in general how we do this is by treating the waste stream until it can be released safely into the environment at which point degradation processes that occur naturally in the environment continue to reduce the concentrations of contaminants and finish the cleaning process. So the existing wastewater treatment approach is to balance the release with the naturally occurring capacity to assimilate and attenuate the contamination in the environment. So we need to take that same type of approach with emerging contaminants.
Now because emerging contaminants are a new problem, from a wastewater treatment standpoint, we need to go out and identify exactly what concentrations are safe in the environment. So for example, with the endocrine disrupting compounds and the the impacts that they are having on fish. We need to identify safe concentrations, concentrations at which these harmful effects are not going to occur. And then the second thing we need to do is, we need to continue to study our river systems and identify and characterize those processes that can help us clean up any contaminants that are actually released into the stream. We need to understand the rates at which these, these natural processes occur and how effectively they are occurring. And then the final thing we will probably need to do is we will need to adjust our treatment processes in the facilities so that we can actually lower the concentration and bring those releases into balance with the naturally occurring processes.
Douglas: Paul, Thanks for sharing with us today and it's certainly good to know that USGS research is helping us better understand and eventually correct this problem.
Bradley: Any time.
Douglas: We've been talking with Dr. Paul Bradley, USGS Research Ecologist in the South Carolina Water Science Center. For more information on this program visit us on the web at sc.water.usgs.gov
Dr. Paul Bradley: So we need to begin to correct this problem, we certainly need to understand it, so it's good that this information is coming out, and it is also good that we continue to study the problem so that we can assess the potential to manage the problem and to clean up any contamination that exists in the environment now and prevent future contamination. And to do that we have to have release of new information. So while these releases are sometimes alarming you know having the information is better than not having the information."
Want to learn more about pharmaceuticals in water? Follow me to the Emerging Contaminants website!
• Water Science School HOME • Water Quality topics •
Source of pharmaceuticals in streams
In a to U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) study, scientists found that pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities can be a significant source of pharmaceuticals to the environment. Effluents from two wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) that receive discharge from pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities (PMFs) had 10 to 1,000 times higher concentrations of pharmaceuticals than effluents from 24 WWTPs across the nation that do not receive PMF discharge. The release waters from these two WWTPs were discharged to streams where the measured pharmaceuticals were traced downstream, and as far as 30 kilometers from one plant's outfall.
The source of pharmaceuticals in water is not just from manufacturing plants. You probably know that antibiotics and drugs are used in the livestock industry, and for streams receiving runoff from animal-feeding operations, pharmaceuticals such as acetaminophen, caffeine, cotinine, diphenhydramine, and carbamazepine, have been found in USGS studies. Another source of pharmaceuticals in stream water is you and me. Essentially, drugs that people take internally are not all metabolized in the body, and the excess ends up in our wastewater leaving homes and entering the sewage-treatment plants. It might sound surprising that these drugs could be detected in streams miles downstream from wastewater-treatment plants, but many plants do not routinely remove pharmaceuticals from water.
Listen up!
The USGS has a couple of podcasts about pharmaceuticals and the aquatic environment to help you learn about this problem:
Here is a transcript of one of them:
The USGS South Atlantic Water Science Center has released a podcast titled "Emerging Contaminants, Pharmaceuticals in South Carolina Rivers and Streams". USGS Research Ecologist Dr. Paul Bradley discussed with Ray Douglas the USGS Toxic Substances Research on emerging contaminants in rivers and streams; the information is pertinent to all of the United States, not just South Carolina. Below is a transcript of the podcast.
Dr. Paul Bradley: "There is little doubt that these compounds have been present in the environment for decades and perhaps even more. It's possible that there have been long term ecological consequences that are reaching a critical stage. So while these releases are sometimes alarming. You know, having the information is better than not having the information."
Today on our program, Emerging Contaminants, Pharmaceuticals in South Carolina's Rivers and Streams. I am Ray Douglas and this is Water Science for a changing world.
Bradley: "And so we need to begin to correct this problem, we certainly need to understand it. So it is good that this information is coming out, and to do that we have to have release of new information."
Douglas: Joining us today is Dr. Paul Bradely. Dr. Bradley is a USGS Research Ecologist in the South Carolina Water Science Center. Paul, thanks for joining us today.
Bradley: Thank you.
Douglas: Paul, it seems seems that we're hearing more and more about emerging contaminants in our rivers and streams across the U.S.. Hopefully you can help us understand where these contaminants are originating, and how they are appearing in our drinking water. But before we get to that, can you tell us what exactly emerging contaminants are?
Bradley: Emerging contaminants is kind of this umbrella term that refers loosely to a wide variety of contaminants which presence in the environment has long been suspected, but which we have only recently verified due to improvements in analytical techniques. The emerging contaminants umbrella covers several broad classes of contaminant compounds that are loosely categorized according to their ecological impacts or their intended function, or their sources. These can include: pharmaceuticals and personal care products, organic wastewater compounds, antimicrobials, antibiotics, animal and human hormones, endocrine disrupting compounds, as well as a variety of domestic and industrial detergents. The critical thing to remember about all of these contaminants is, is that what's emerging about them is our awareness of their potential environmental impacts in the environment and our ability to actually detect the compounds. There is no doubt that many of these contaminants have been in the environment for a long time.
Douglas: Well can you give an idea of where they are, and how common they are in the environment?
Bradley: Well the USGS Toxic Substances Hydrology Program has been conducting a variety of national surveys over the past decade. And the results of these various studies indicates that, that emerging contaminants are actually widespread in the environment and they are found in rivers and streams across the nation. They are also found in groundwater systems. Not surprisingly you tend to have them in higher frequency near urban centers, but you also find them in rural areas where there is no readily obvious source for them.
Douglas: So, where are they coming from?
Bradley: Well ultimately, they are coming from us. Most of these compounds are produced either naturally or largely manufactured for use in and by people. For health applications like drugs, antibiotics synthetic hormones, you know for personal and domestic use like perfumes, antibacterial soaps and detergents. Everyday ingredients in products, domestic and industrial products. For farming applications, antibiotics and hormones are commonly used in cattle and in livestock operations. So given the wide range of emerging contaminants and the wide range of sources and uses, obviously there are a number of different ways that they can end up getting into the environment, and into the streams and rivers in particular. The obvious source, and the one most people pay attention too is via the human waste stream and municipal wastewater treatment facility outfalls directly into stream systems.
Certainly this is the one most people are aware of but there are a number of other sources out there, for example, industrial wastewater treatment plants also release emerging contaminants into rivers and streams. Septic systems, privately owned septic systems, for example are releasing emerging contaminants into the groundwater system and depending on how close the groundwater system and the release point is to a surface waster body, this groundwater contamination can make its way to rivers and streams. Animal operations, particularly so-called "concentrated animal feed operations," are another poorly recognized but certainly a major concern to the scientific community. Because in contrast to the human waste stream which is fairly closely monitored, animal waste stream is not monitored, and we expect that the contribution to the environment from this source is going to be major, perhaps even greater than the wastewater treatment plants.
Douglas: The wastewater treatment plants, aren't they supposed to be removing the compounds?
Bradley: Well in fact many emerging contaminant compounds, or compounds that we would consider emerging contaminants if we actually detected them in the environment, are actually removed completely in the wastewater treatment plant facilities, at least at the current detection levels, on the other hand many other emerging contaminant compounds that we can detect in the environment, their concentrations are greatly reduced in the wastewater treatment facility as they move along the wastewater stream to eventual release. And decreases in concentrations can be in excess or ninety to ninety-five percent. Unfortunately, many of them are still being released to the environment, at very low concentrations. And this is kind of the point, this is kind of an emerging environmental concern and these wastewater treatment plants were not originally intended to address this type of contamination and in fact are not actually intended to address contaminant concentrations at these part per trillion levels, these very very low concentrations. It turns out that there is evidence that even at these really low concentrations some of these emerging contaminants are actually harmful to the environment.
Douglas: Well based on your findings so far should the concern rest more for the fish, or for us, the general population?
Bradley: Well at this point the primary concern, has got to be for aquatic wildlife like fish. Because many of these compounds are obviously produced for function in human beings, the presence of these compounds in rivers, in streams or even worse in drinking water supplies is obviously a matter of deep concern for a lot of people. But it's important to remember people don't actually live in rivers or streams and the concentrations for example, of pharmaceuticals that are being observed in drinking water supplies, are in fact much, much, much lower than their therapeutic dose. That is, the concentration that they were intended to work in human beings. On the other hand, fish and other aquatic wildlife do live in rivers and they're much more vulnerable to certain types of emerging contaminants. For example, endocrine disrupting compounds, can alter the hormone system of fish, resulting in changes in secondary sexual characteristics and potentially resulting in reproductive failure. There has been a recent study reported done for example that is getting a lot of attention which reports that some popular sport fish like largemouth and smallmouth bass, are exhibiting female characteristics even in the male fish, and this phenomenon appears to be widespread in rivers and stream across the U.S.. and this study included two rivers in South Carolina, the Pee Dee River and the Savannah river and this kind of sexual alteration was observed in both of these rivers.
Douglas: Well as individuals what can we to help with this problem?
Bradley: Well we can change our behavior to be more environmentally friendly. Whether that means disposing of drugs properly, ie. don't throw them down the toilet or flush them down the drain. Buying products that are safer for the environment more biodegradable products. Or perhaps getting involved at the community level in order to improve environmental protection.
Douglas: Well I do believe that there are several states that have begun these drug take back events where you can drop off your unused or outdated pharmaceuticals for proper disposal. Is that really helpful or is there something more that we can be doing, or is the problem just going to get worse before it gets better?
Bradley: Well In a general sense, we need to start managing the release of emerging contaminates into the environment. It is kind of important to look at this problem in a historical perspective. And understand that controlling the release of human waste into rivers and streams is something that we have been doing for many years now. Actively managing waste releases to streams is something that we have been doing for more than a century. And in general how we do this is by treating the waste stream until it can be released safely into the environment at which point degradation processes that occur naturally in the environment continue to reduce the concentrations of contaminants and finish the cleaning process. So the existing wastewater treatment approach is to balance the release with the naturally occurring capacity to assimilate and attenuate the contamination in the environment. So we need to take that same type of approach with emerging contaminants.
Now because emerging contaminants are a new problem, from a wastewater treatment standpoint, we need to go out and identify exactly what concentrations are safe in the environment. So for example, with the endocrine disrupting compounds and the the impacts that they are having on fish. We need to identify safe concentrations, concentrations at which these harmful effects are not going to occur. And then the second thing we need to do is, we need to continue to study our river systems and identify and characterize those processes that can help us clean up any contaminants that are actually released into the stream. We need to understand the rates at which these, these natural processes occur and how effectively they are occurring. And then the final thing we will probably need to do is we will need to adjust our treatment processes in the facilities so that we can actually lower the concentration and bring those releases into balance with the naturally occurring processes.
Douglas: Paul, Thanks for sharing with us today and it's certainly good to know that USGS research is helping us better understand and eventually correct this problem.
Bradley: Any time.
Douglas: We've been talking with Dr. Paul Bradley, USGS Research Ecologist in the South Carolina Water Science Center. For more information on this program visit us on the web at sc.water.usgs.gov
Dr. Paul Bradley: So we need to begin to correct this problem, we certainly need to understand it, so it's good that this information is coming out, and it is also good that we continue to study the problem so that we can assess the potential to manage the problem and to clean up any contamination that exists in the environment now and prevent future contamination. And to do that we have to have release of new information. So while these releases are sometimes alarming you know having the information is better than not having the information."
Want to learn more about pharmaceuticals in water? Follow me to the Emerging Contaminants website!
Are you interested in learning more about pharmaceutical water system(tl,ja,tr)? Contact us today to secure an expert consultation!
If you are interested in sending in a Guest Blogger Submission,welcome to write for us!
All Comments ( 0 )